Stocks opened modestly higher but struggled to stay out of the red in thin trading volume. The bond market was closed in observance of Veterans Day, a federal government holiday.

Providing support to the market was encouraging official data over the weekend on China's trade. Export growth accelerated in October for the second straight month, fresh evidence the world's second-largest economy is recovering from a slowdown.

United Technologies led the Dow higher, rising 1.5 per cent, followed by AT&T, up nearly one per cent.

Hewlett-Packard was the laggard, down 1.5 per cent.

In mergers and acquisitions action, holding company Leucadia National will purchase the rest of what it does not already own of global investment banking firm Jefferies Group, the companies announced. Leucadia dropped 3.0 per cent and Jefferies jumped 14.0 per cent.

Titanium Metals soared 42.6 per cent after announcing it would be bought by Precision Castparts in a $2.9 billion deal. Precision added 4.9 per cent.

Canadian firm Research In Motion's US-traded shares rose 3.2 per cent after it announced a January 30 launch of its next-generation BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

D.R. Horton tumbled 5.8 per cent. The large Texas-based homebuilder reported a big jump in fiscal fourth-quarter profit from a year ago amid improvement in the ailing housing market.

On Friday, US stocks eked out small gains, capping a week of two per cent losses amid growing worries about the "fiscal cliff," automatic spending cuts and expiring tax breaks at year-end unless Democrats and Republicans can reach a compromise to avoid them.